Monday with Mounce

I know. καί and pain in the same title. Strange bedfellows. I still remember a few years back when my family was going through a time of deep pain and sadness. A good friend asked me, “Bill, why are you hanging on to the edge of the pool? Just let go and sink.” A strange idea amid pain, but it has stuck with me, and it was some of the best advice I have ever received. Here’s the exegesis behind it.

How you decide on the meaning of a Greek word that rarely occurs?

In Titus 2, Paul gives a list of characteristics and activities for older men (v 2) and then older women (vv 3–5). This later group is to teach the younger women to be “busy at home (οἰκουργούς).” How do you define οἰκουργός? Both it and its variant οἰκουρός occur only here in the New Testament and rarely in secular literature.

ξύλον is a difficult word to translate, although from its entry in BDAG you wouldn’t think so. It gives three basic meanings: (1) Wood; (2) Something made of wood, such as a pole, club, stocks, cross; (3) Tree.

Gal 3:13 in the NIV reads, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.’” The use of “pole” is, shall we say, unexpected since we know the shape of the cross. How could Jesus have been hung on a pole when the wounds in his hands require a cross?

Every once in a while I come across a verse that is simply impossible to translate. No matter what you do, you over- or under-translate, or at worst, mistranslate. 2 John 1:12 is one of those verses. “Although I have many other things to write (γράφειν) to you, I do not want to use (οὐκ ἐβουλήθην) paper and ink (διὰ χάρτου καὶ μέλανος); instead, I hope to be with you and speak face to face, so that our joy may be complete.”

My friend is wondering when Satan’s powers were limited. Creation? The cross? The Millennium? What prompted the discussion was that a friend of his thinks that Satan is not limited at all right now, and therefore all limiting has to be during the Millennium.